Archives

Follow me on Facebook

Crawling around the Social Media Starfish, er, reading feeds

So, I was reading feeds and just ran across Fred Wilson’s A VC blog (he’s a famous VC who lives in New York City and invests in a bunch of stuff that we use everyday). He posts that his favorite post was a picture done by the founder of Vimeo. Asks what does that say? About blogging?

It says to me that we’re all weird creatures and that we like weird stuff. Including a founder lying in bed pondering the future.

I put it on my link blog. Why? Cause I liked it too.

Translation: there’s something deeper going on on blogs.

1. Blogs have lost their humanity. Their weirdness. Instead we’ve become vehicles to announce new products and initiatives on.
2. We’ve gotten too caught up in the TechMeme games.
3. We’re bored. The interesting stuff is happening off blogs. This afternoon, for instance, I’m meeting Hugh Macleod and we’re just going to hang out in Palo Alto and have fun. Meet at the Apple store at 3 p.m. on University Ave.
4. Creative stuff and ideas and questions are getting spread out all over the place.

Anyway, hope you’re having a good weekend.

I’ve just put a bunch of stuff up on my link blog, including a report of what we were doing at Nokia on Thursday. Hey, there’s that Social Media Starfish again! Look for “NRC Palo Alto” or “Active Words” in the link blog and you’ll see the starfish.

There’s a lot of great stuff on my link blog. Joi Ito recommends PhotoPhlow. Fake Steve Jobs gives some interviews there. Microsoft’s Listas is discussed. B5 Media has a post about me being on its advisory board. Louis Gray talks about his love of FriendFeed. And on and on.

Published by

Robert Scoble

As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people. Best place to watch me is on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble
View all posts by Robert Scoble

[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptSo, I was reading feeds and just ran across Fred Wilson’s A VC blog . He posts that his favorite post was a picture done by the founder of Vimeo. […]

Blogs have lost their humanity? Whose blogs? It depends who the blogger is, whether blogging is their career, etc etc.

I dont see some great change, maybe the realisation is new but the phenomenon isnt.

Cant talk aout blogs in such general terms. Anyway blogs have never been the main source of all useful and interesting and weird stuff on the net, I know there is a tendency to talk everything up as new, but Ive always found plenty of weird interesting stuff on the net, no matter what the TechMeme of the day is. Forums, messageboards, mailing lists etc are so similar in many ways, and can be welcome homes of the weird.

The honeymoon period of blogging is over, as it is for podcasting and vlogging. When the excitement of the new territory is over, its time to see whats really worthwhile and stands the course.

Ive had a fun weekend, was of more use in a single day to humans, by releasing a quickly botched together leopard ichat hologram type effect, than I have been in many years of waffling in forums & comments.

Blogs have lost their humanity? Whose blogs? It depends who the blogger is, whether blogging is their career, etc etc.

I dont see some great change, maybe the realisation is new but the phenomenon isnt.

Cant talk aout blogs in such general terms. Anyway blogs have never been the main source of all useful and interesting and weird stuff on the net, I know there is a tendency to talk everything up as new, but Ive always found plenty of weird interesting stuff on the net, no matter what the TechMeme of the day is. Forums, messageboards, mailing lists etc are so similar in many ways, and can be welcome homes of the weird.

The honeymoon period of blogging is over, as it is for podcasting and vlogging. When the excitement of the new territory is over, its time to see whats really worthwhile and stands the course.

Ive had a fun weekend, was of more use in a single day to humans, by releasing a quickly botched together leopard ichat hologram type effect, than I have been in many years of waffling in forums & comments.

I know your claim is in the service of a larger point about the evolution of communication formats, but it strikes me as a bit of a hasty generalization. Why don’t you trade OPML files with a different person each day for a week, particularly people who are outside of the “fabric” of TechMeme, and see if you can still confidently make the point?

I know your claim is in the service of a larger point about the evolution of communication formats, but it strikes me as a bit of a hasty generalization. Why don’t you trade OPML files with a different person each day for a week, particularly people who are outside of the “fabric” of TechMeme, and see if you can still confidently make the point?

[…] hasn’t even passed into a faded memory even though many of us may have already forgotten Robert Scoble’s post declaring that blogs are boring and have lost their humanity which I found via a post by Ed […]

[…] more that cool catchy marketing terms. Funnily enough and even though Robert Scoble might have declared them dead and boring I do think that blogs can play an important part in any future social changes. I even think that […]

SB: do you “read” a newspaper? Really? Do you read every single word in it? Or just scan the page for something interesting, then you read that in depth don’t you? To me that whole process +is+ reading.

But don’t judge me on whether I’m scanning or not. If I’m not “reading” the materials coming through my feed stream I won’t pick killer stuff for you. Judge me by what I put on my link blog. is it the best stuff available? Yes or no. Many many people tell me it is. So, if that’s true, then I must have picked those items somehow. Hint: I read EVERYTHING in depth that I put on there.

SB: do you “read” a newspaper? Really? Do you read every single word in it? Or just scan the page for something interesting, then you read that in depth don’t you? To me that whole process +is+ reading.

But don’t judge me on whether I’m scanning or not. If I’m not “reading” the materials coming through my feed stream I won’t pick killer stuff for you. Judge me by what I put on my link blog. is it the best stuff available? Yes or no. Many many people tell me it is. So, if that’s true, then I must have picked those items somehow. Hint: I read EVERYTHING in depth that I put on there.

I see where you’re coming from. My blog lost its humanity when a family of monkeys took it over to post webcomics on it. However the content is still pretty interesting, in fact sometimes it’s totally bananas and readers often go ape over it.

I see where you’re coming from. My blog lost its humanity when a family of monkeys took it over to post webcomics on it. However the content is still pretty interesting, in fact sometimes it’s totally bananas and readers often go ape over it.